The invention concerns a child-safe packing for tablets, capsules and similar pharmaceutical products, with a blister pack with at least one cup to hold the tablets or capsules sealed by a push-through cover film.
The danger of unsupervised consumption of drugs is undisputed, where in particular small children are greatly exposed to this potential risk especially when drugs are left lying around.
Blister packs have become the predominant form of packaging for tablets and capsules. Push-through packs, in which the tablets are pushed through a cover film from a cup in the base of the packing, have become very common. In other known blister packs a cover film is removed by peeling. Other blister packs have a notch as a tear aid.
The possibilities exploited today for increasing the child-safety of said blister packs for tablets and capsules consist of rendering opening more difficult by measures which require increased force, e.g. thicker push-through films, stronger adhesion of peel films or high tear resistance at tear notches.
Packs which can only be opened with increased use of force are indeed child-safe but can constitute a problem for the elderly.
The invention is therefore based on the task of providing a child-safe packing of the type described above which can be opened without difficulty by the elderly. This is essentially a matter of designing the packing in such a way that combination ability is required or simultaneous or complex movement sequences have to be performed.
To solve the problem in accordance with the invention therefore the blister pack is arranged in an outer pack between a base part and a cover part, and optionally an intermediate part is fixed between the blister pack and cover part or between the blister pack and base part, where the cover part and, if an intermediate part is provided, the intermediate part form an opening part which is removable from the cover part or from the intermediate part or from the cover film to expose the cover film.
Opening of the pack in accordance with the invention requires a combination ability in the sense that before pushing through the tablet at least one part has to be removed to expose the cover film.
Advantageously, the cup of the blister pack projects outward from the plane formed by the base part, where in the simplest case the cup of the blister pack penetrates an opening in the base part. If the base part is made of a moldable material, a cup can also be formed from this and the cup of the blister pack can be arranged in the cup of the base part.
In a preferred version of the packing according to the invention the opening part is preferably a tear-off strip connected to the cover part by means of a weakening line, especially a perforation line.
In a variant of the pack in accordance with the invention in which an intermediate part is placed between the blister pack and the cover part, the cover part may have a tear-off strip which is preferably detachably connected to the cover part by a first perforation line and which at least partially exposes the intermediate part.
The opening part can for example be a tear-off strip preferably connected to the intermediate part by way of a second perforation line.
The opening part may also be detachably connected to the cover film and removable from this by peeling. For this the opening part can for example be connected to the cover film by means of an adhesive or form a separable laminate together with the cover film.
In a particularly low cost production variant the outer pack consists of a single cut-out.
A double pack can easily be made from two part pickings arranged mirror symmetrically.
In a further variant of the packing according to the invention with an intermediate part placed between the blister pack and the cover part, a first opening tab can be arranged, preferably detachably connected to the intermediate part by way of a first perforation line, and inside the first opening tab can be placed a second opening tab, preferably detachably connected to the first opening tab by means of a second perforation line to form the opening part, where the second opening tab is detachable from the first opening tab after the first opening tab has been detached from the intermediate part to expose the cover film.
At least two packs can be joined together to form multi-portion packs, where the individual packs arranged next to each other form a multi-strip pack and are preferably detachable from the strip pack along a weakening line, preferably a perforation line.
For production of the packing according to the invention, rigid, semi-rigid and flexible materials known today for the production of packing, in the form of sheets, films, laminates or other layer materials in a thickness from a few mm to a few mm, preferably 8 mm to 3 mm, can be used. Examples of film-like materials are metal foils such as aluminum foil. Other examples of film-like materials are paper, semi-cardboard and cardboard. Particularly important are plastic-containing films, e.g., those based on polyolefins such as polyethylenes or polypropylenes, polyamides, polyvinyl chloride, polyesters such as polyalkylene terephthalates and, in particular, polyethylene terephthalate. The plastic-containing films can be monofilms of plastics, laminates of two or more plastic films, laminates of metal and plastic films, laminates of papers and plastic films or laminates of paper and metal and plastic films. The individual layers of the film-like materials can be attached to each other by means of adhesives, pastes, adhesive promotion agents and/or by extrusion coating, coextrusion or laminating, etc. Suitable plastic films are, for example, non-oriented or axially or biaxially oriented monofilms or laminates of two or more non-oriented or axially or biaxially oriented films of plastics based on polyolefins such as polyethylenes or polypropylenes, polyamides, polyvinyl chloride, polyesters such as polyalkylene terephthalates and, in particular, polyethylene terephthalate, cyclo-olefin-copolymers (CO) and polychloro-trifluoroethylene (PCTFE, trademark ACLAR).
Particularly suitable for the base parts of blister packs are transparent plastics with good molding properties such as polyethylene, polypropylene, cyclo-olefin-copolymers (COC), polyvinyl chloride, polyethylene terephthalate, polyamide and laminates made from said materials, e.g., PVC and polychloro-trifluoroethylene (PCTFE) or PVC and PVDC (polyvinyldichloride). For non-transparent blister packs, for example, laminates are used of an aluminum film coated on both sides with a plastic film with, for example, the structure polyamide/aluminum/PVC or pigmented plastic films. The cover film is usually an aluminum film of, for example, a thickness of 20 mm that can be painted and/or coated with a hot seal lacquer.
All of the above film-like materials such as paper, semi-cardboard, cardboard and plastic films in the form of monofilms, laminates, etc., can have at least one further continuous layer of ceramic materials sputtered or deposited from a vacuum in a thickness of approximately 5 to 500 nm (nanometers), for example, Al2O3 or SiOx, where x is a number between 1.5 and 2. These layers of ceramic materials have barrier properties and prevent the diffusion of gases and water vapors through the packing.